


when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire

by cosmicpoet



Series: momoharu week 2018 [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (kinda), Domestic, F/M, Flowers, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Harukawa sits within the flowers and contemplates the sadness of her life.





	when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire

She has overestimated the sunset; the brilliance, the burning cacophony, still hangs from a noose in the sky for a little longer – as she sits outside, stuck in the liminal, waiting for the sun to go down and bless her with the emptiness of night, Harukawa cannot help but exhale a breath she doesn’t recall taking in.

Pushing air out of her stretched, dry lungs, she imagines her body as an empty orchestra, wind whistling through hollow bones like the haunting almost-silence of something once beautiful, abandoned. This place, this feeling; she imagines it would be fitting for a churchyard, wherein she may stumble upon her own name, or perhaps a wine-red unmarked grave, and all at once the hypothetical sky would fall like the rafters of a cursed stage play. A name that must not be said.

 _“Harukawa,”_ she traces her own lips, feeling the softness where her brain imagines rough ice. Belonging to her, and thus completely tarnished; the brush of fate dips into dark watercolours and casts shadows onto the places where light never blossomed in the first place. _Dark. Havisham. Curtains. Thickness._ These words tumble through her mind, never quite coherent enough to have quantifiable significance; rather, they exist in a separate universe, something parallel, as if Harukawa herself is sitting on a plane between two realities. And yet, in her head, every disgusting word rhymes with her own name.

Still, there’s a sweetness in the soft of the garden. Extending far beyond the little cottage that rhymes with _home,_ she has put herself at a considerable distance from the safety of happiness. It’s not something she can grab; it is offered to her on a platter, and yet she only holds the knife with which to ruin everything, yet again – always the same, Harukawa with the knife, Harukawa with the pills, Harukawa with the isolation, Harukawa… _Harukawa._

The long grass envelops her, and she wishes she were as small as she was the first time she was abandoned, enough to hide in the colours and burrow down into the earth’s core. Thoughts of burning alive enamour her, of melting flesh into the earth, getting right down to the bones of the thing and making a home where she cannot hear her anxieties for the sound of the crackling of her body. Something mortal may always be destroyed, and Harukawa uses the sacrificial pyre as a bed, dancing with death so frequently that her ribs are cracking from the pressure of being held and moved by something divine.

Gently, her hands brush the flowers, each petal numbing the weight upon her fingertips. Whilst she desires to rip the buds from the stems and fill her mouth with the glorious pollen, pushing pearls down her throat until she finds herself taken by the ground, looking up at the sky…she refrains. Instead, she becomes hyperaware of the softness on her palms, her fingers, until every part of her yearns to become one of them.

But time passes on once again, and her sunset – _her burning sunset –_ sets in motion the final act of the day. The stars are ready once more to take the final bow, and the rafters have not yet fallen. Christening the sky in glorious hues, the sun teeters upon the edge of a repetitive, nightly suicide.

_Oh, how glorious to have so many chances to rise. How beautifully vile._

Again, Harukawa finds herself in the liminal. The dusty blue of the sky is not yet night, but the absence of the sun chills her to her burning bones, and she savours the feeling of physical discomfort. No longer can she accept that her life is different, now. Where knives and guns once felt so familiar, now her hands feel warm against another’s, palm to palm in terrifying destiny.

Which brings her back to the subject of sitting amongst the grass and the faint flowers. Truly, she feels selfish, leaving Momota inside to cook supper, but every act of his kindness sinks into her heart and twists the blades she used to hold. No…she reasons that she would be better off alone, but it sickens her to think that this is a lie. It is he…it is Momota who would be better off alone. Harukawa takes her path, and burns every bridge behind her.

Some things are easier. This is not one of them.

Control, although established, is easily lost in this world of lies; like a chessboard tipped in advantage of the shadow of God, some things slip through Harukawa’s grasp despite her attempts to build walls. One of those things – a good thing, which makes her feel all the more selfish for taking good away from the world and stuffing it into her pocket to cherish and shield from everyone – is Momota.

Bounding through the grass, he evidently sees the flowers as a miracle, something optimistic and beautiful, as if the light that leaks through the trees blesses him whilst blinding her; she cannot comprehend how the universe could have formed enough grace to make him. Every atom of him gleams with the radiance of thousands of supernovae, and she begs every day to be engulfed by his deadly warmth. He couldn’t harm a fly, but he holds her fragile heart between his teeth, and her baited breath – waiting, eternally for him to spit her right back out onto the floor – sticks in her throat like dry ice.

He hasn’t let her down yet. And as his hand reaches towards her, blocking just a tiny bit of the darkness, Harukawa doubts that he ever will. And this thought, this optimistic thought inspired no doubt by him, is enough to pull her to her feet. Perhaps she leaves a little of her melancholy behind, because she walks with a little more pride back to their cottage, and leaves a small part of her sad, sweet soul to fester within the grass.

When the wind picks up, some part of the earth takes her discarded – no, _temporarily left behind –_ sadness and catapults it straight into the air, travelling ever upwards, to die freezing, not burning, in the depths of outer space, or to float on forever in the liminal insignificance of letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> Day Two of Momoharu Week 2018 is here!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this! I realised during the process of this fic that I'm using flowery language when the prompt I chose is literally 'Flora'...happy coincidences are cool! 
> 
> Anyway, please leave a comment if you liked this one!
> 
> Title from 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' by Stars!


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